


A Dream of Shadows

by finches_and_wrens



Category: Original Work
Genre: Autocracy, Blood and Violence, F/F, F/M, Insurgency, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Original Fantasy, Religion, Revolution, Sword and Sorcery Fantasy, Theocratic Government, actual homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:47:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26717749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finches_and_wrens/pseuds/finches_and_wrens
Summary: Disbanded across the five nations, a group of survivors rally to wage war against a theocratic government to preserve their way of life.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Original Female Character/Original Male Character, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes about the story, just generally (although if you're here from my fandom account, you probably know a lot of this already): I wrote this novel as I was processing an enormous amount of religious trauma, repression, and internalized homophobia about my own queer identity. I'm drawing, overwhelmingly, from my own experience in an environment where it was absolutely not safe to be queer. There is a happy ending (and some humor and bright spots along the way), but this story is very long, and it does take a while to get there. The only LGBTQ characters who die in this story are very minor characters among a cast of predominantly queer characters, so you don't have to worry about that, but there is a lot of heavy subject matter. I know there's a lot of talk about purity and positive representation in queer fiction vs. letting queer writers be messy, and I'm telling you right now, this is messy queer fiction (although I do hope it still feels positive if you stick around to read it. It was, ultimately, a very healing experience for me.)
> 
> I will add tags in the author's notes as needed on a chapter by chapter basis, but the tags above cover, generally, what occurs consistently. Please take care and only read if you're in the headspace for it. <3

_The story of our creation is simple._

_Sarek’khan came first, born of the great magic that existed in our world. He learned to manipulate that magic to his gain, the first mage, and then brought Tarahel into being – the god of death, ironically, the first to give life._

_Our children were born over the years, growing into unique races. Some of them couldn’t hear the call of the magic of our earth at all – they became the human race, beloved by us even if they were the most mundane of our people. They were clever in their own way, and crafted weapons for themselves to compensate for their lack of connection to the magic that ruled our world. The rest of our children were closer to us in ability, and became the mages and the wizards. Our little sister, Naelanys, created the Elves of the north with the same feline eyes she had been born with, and she took a particular fondness to them, ignoring the other races but walking among her children frequently._

_And then there were the few who were different, not just made in our image, but gifted in the same way we were, existing within space and time but not bound by it. And so they were set apart, too, not just our children, but our equals. Our family grew as our children’s clans did, and for thousands of years, we thrived. We weren’t gods, really, just mages with an incredibly strong connection to the power of our world, but that was what they called us, and in our pride, we accepted the titles willingly enough, allowing them to worship us as infallible when we weren’t._

_The story of our fall is simple, too._

_The Traitor, one of our own but weaker than us, jealous of being consistently overlooked when our names were always invoked by our people, broke us with his trickery and cunning. He traveled across the eastern sea and discovered the Eurian people, devoid of any magic of their own but powerful in the ways of human war, and he used the magic of our world to present himself to their priests as their one true god. He was finally worshipped, beloved by his people, but that wasn’t enough for him. To prove his superiority, he sent the Eurians across the sea to destroy us._

_But that is another, sadder story._


	2. Yuvie

Yuvie Elkar goes to the execution because she must.

Because the city guard goes door to door in New Euria and drags people out if they try to stay in their homes. Because it is an expectation of Virien Sorentheon, the boy king who lords over the five kingdoms of New Euria, an expectation enforced by the council and the military so that people like her will learn their lesson and learn it well – rebellion against the throne will never succeed.

Because refusing to attend cannot stop the killing; it can only make things worse.

So Yuvie stands in the crowd between Ash and Willem, and she slips her hand into Ash’s. He’s too old for it now, but her cousin is younger than her by twelve years, so when he was a boy, Yuvie could always pretend that she was trying to reassure him instead of herself.

She can’t mask it so well these days – she’s afraid. Afraid of many things, but mostly that she’ll lose Ash. Afraid that one day she won’t be able to find him when an execution is announced, that she will be dragged from her home alone to find that Ash is finally bound for the gallows.

They only have so much luck. It will run out, eventually. Luck always does.

They don't know any of the men being executed today, thank fuck. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they're neighbors, or acquaintances. Once or twice, it's been a friend. Every time they file into the square to watch the hanging, they wonder who it is, and they worry that it's one of their own.

At least luck hasn’t abandoned them today.

They listen to the charges. One man, a treasurer, stole coin from the crown’s accounts, just enough that it would go unnoticed, and tried to pass it along to the resistance. He failed somewhere along the way, clearly – Yuvie doesn’t allow herself to wonder where. Another is there for killing a city guard. Another is accused of plotting to assassinate a member of the king’s high council.

Yuvie isn't surprised. The Sorentheon regime always holds public executions for conspirators against the throne. It’s a message – the boy king knows he is unloved, and so he must make himself feared throughout New Euria instead.

It grows more difficult every year to remember a time before it, but the kingdoms of New Euria were not always united, and Virien Sorentheon wasn't always their king. They were individual countries, governed by their own kings and queens. That was before the conquering, before Rourq Sorentheon, the boy king’s father, decided to lay claim to the Torrentian throne - a foolhardy plan at any other juncture, but each country had been weak in its own way following the years-long war with the wizards of the north, and they were divided on the issue of wizard immigration. As the monarchs planned to welcome wizards to their lands, Rourq Sorentheon rallied an army of those who would live in no such world, who would die to protect what they believed their Creator had given them from outsiders.

 _Go for the easy target_ , Renn, one of Yuvie’s childhood friends, used to say. He had been a hunter by trade, so Yuvie supposes he knew what he was talking about. And the throne had been a _very_ easy target, so perhaps she never had a right to be surprised by the conquering, or even angry. And even if she did, that was fifteen years ago now.

Still, it hurts, to look back and see how obvious their trajectory was all along, how inevitable it all feels.

For fifteen years, Yuvie and Ash have been trapped in Eseter, the capitol of New Euria. Fifteen years desperate to find a way out, even if there is none. No one leaves the city. No one passes beyond the walls and descends the mountain without permission. And the only people with permission are those who have the king’s favor, which Yuvie and Ash certainly do not.

So, because they cannot escape, they try to survive instead. Yuvie catches herself wondering every day how long they possibly can.

They can’t live here forever, and yet there is no way out for people like them except to die.

Yuvie looks down at her boots, and the cobblestone underneath, as the nooses are fastened by the headsman. The prisoners don’t cry, and she’s grateful, even if she feels guilty for it. Sometimes they cry, and worse, plead and beg and piss themselves just to die anyway. It is awful to watch – Yuvie is tired of watching. She sees Ash at the end of the noose every time, and it grinds away at her resolve, makes her desperate and fitful and complacent and demure all at once, a caged animal pacing endlessly back and forth.

The Sorentheon regime would like to see Ash dead. Not even for what he’s done…no, they would kill him without knowing any of that, if they only knew who he is. _What_ he is.

Wizards are killed on sight in New Euria these days, and Ash has wizard blood on his father’s side.

They don’t telling anyone that, _obviously_. Only Willem knows, and only because he knew them before their world was ripped apart. No one else can ever know who they are – it’s why Yuvie and Ash have false names that they live by, Leta and Kalidan, because half-wizard children have always been uncommon, and so Ash was a topic of interest before the conquering, a well-known name in the city. They don’t even call themselves by their true names in the safety of their home.

Ash has never learned to use his magic, although he has plenty of it. Wizards can blend in with humans as they like, so long as they can control their magic, which is simple enough to say, but no small task for a wizard with no training. From the time Ash was a boy, Yuvie taught him how to control his emotions, how to suppress his fear and his rage, because with his emotions came his magic, unfettered. If it ever happened at the wrong moment…if anyone saw…

Yuvie doesn’t like to think about it, but she thinks about it every damn day, because she must. Because she must imagine the worst to keep them from it. There is no other way.

Maybe it's because of Ash, but Yuvie feels more compassion towards the wizards than many, even if it would be easy to blame them for the state of the world. There’s a complicated history there, and it's the wrong choice to hate them, even if it's what many people do. Before this, before the conquering, there was another war, one driven by an army of fundamentalist wizards who claimed their gods had sent them to reclaim the lands that were once theirs. Those were dark and terrible days – although Yuvie personally spent them living in the forest with a band of hunters outside Dwarlendev, which wasn’t so bad. Still, that army was only a fraction of the wizards living in the ice regions, and the others helped the humans defeat their brothers and sisters, which was why they were permitted to immigrate south after the war.

People like Willem say the wizard immigrants abandoned them at the first sign of trouble, that they should have stood against Rourq Sorentheon’s army and fought. That if they had never come south in the first place, Rourq Sorentheon would have had no foothold to make his claim for the throne at all. And maybe that’s true, in a broad, simplistic sort of way, but Yuvie doesn’t think it’s fair to hate the people for that, or to ignore how complex the situation was, even if so many people do.

The city square is quiet, and Yuvie stands close enough to the gallows to hear the rattle of breath as the men die, a sound all too familiar these days. And then it’s over, quick as it ever is. “Praise be to the Creator,” Yuvie mutters with the rest of the crowd – as they’re expected to, although the Creator sure as fuck is not her god, no matter what the boy king says – and then they begin dispersing. Yuvie shuffles along with the herds of people, looking up when Willem puts a hand on her shoulder.

“We should wait until things calm down to meet with the Brigade,” he says in a low voice. “The city guard will still be swarming tonight.”

“Will you spread the word?” she asks him, and he nods.

Their only way out of the city is to die, but that doesn’t mean Yuvie and her companions have stopped trying. It doesn’t mean they haven’t formed their own little insurgency, that they don’t rail against the boy king in whatever way they can. There have been many insurgents in the city over the years, yet the king still rules, but those odds don’t stop them.

Yuvie and Willem formed their little group of insurgents years ago, when Ash was still a boy. They have different reasons for their rebellion. Willem once served as a guard to Drystan Lancar, the Torrentian ruler Rourq Sorentheon unseated and executed during the conquering, so he fights to avenge his dead king, for the memory of a man long gone.

Yuvie just fights because she knows she and Ash will certainly die if they stay still. She sees exactly where that path will lead, and so she chooses to take the other, even if it is shrouded in shadow.

She and Ash return to their little hovel of a home in the slums of the city, and it’s not long after they’re settled inside that Ash says, “Some people at the execution were saying the Snowcat was in Eirendor a few days ago. He’s getting closer.”

The Snowcat is a legend, a myth. He comes south from the wizard guilds in the ice regions, where the mainlander refugees settled after the conquering, or so people say. Rumor has it that he and his company rescue those who are suffering, taking them back to the safety of the north.

It’s a nice story. Maybe it’s even true. But the Snowcat doesn’t come to Eseter, and so it doesn’t matter.

Yuvie manages a small smile when she looks at Ash. “You know that doesn’t affect anything for us, or the Brigade. We have to keep moving.”

Ash isn’t a fool – if anything, he’s more cynical than she is these days. He nods and says, “I know.”

Yuvie goes to her room, although she stops long enough to grasp Ash’s arm on her way past. It’s early, but she still shuts the door and pulls her curtains closed so she can collapse onto her bed.

On days like today, she thinks of home. Not this shit hole, but her real home, the one she hasn’t seen in fifteen years. She and Ash were from Dwarlendev, the Elven city in the north. Her father, Breton, had been a councillor there, and so had Ash's mother, Ria, although Yuvie never had much interest in politics. She always said she was going to be an architect. She had been planning to go to school for it, but she never had the chance. She thinks of the Fayth she used to pray to, beings so unlike the Creator, the Eurians’ one true god.

None of her people live in Dwarlendev anymore, she’s heard. It belongs to allies of the Sorentheon regime now, like everywhere else, everywhere save for the wizard guilds in the north where the refugees live. Rourq Sorentheon's men ran her people out, and killed so many.

Yuvie is glad she hasn’t seen her city since the conquering; she doesn’t think she would like to.

She sighs, rolling over onto her side and trying to make herself comfortable on her thin mattress. She would have liked to meet with the Brigade tonight. She likes to feel like they’re making progress, even if she knows it’s small. Otherwise, she’s trapped alone with her own thoughts, with memories of a world that’s long gone.

And honestly, Yuvie thinks, fuck that.


	3. Ash

Ash tries not to grouse about the cancellation of the Brigade meeting, especially when it's for the safety of their people, but he so hates being trapped in the home he shares with Yuvie with nothing to do. He's read the schoolbooks he had from before the conquering over and over and _over_ again – he's sure he has them memorized by now, but he and Yuvie never have any spare coin to buy any others. Short of reading the books he already knows so well all over again or staring at the ceiling in his attic bedroom, there's nothing to do here.

He could go out, he supposes. Curfew is lax right now, allowing the people of New Euria on the streets almost until midnight, so there's time. But Yuvie worries when he does, even if it's been years since she ordered him not to, and with the executions, her day has already been shit without him making it worse.

So he lays on his mattress – laid on the floor, because the attic ceilings aren't high enough for a bed frame – and stares at the cobwebs above him. It's early to turn in, the sun only just beginning to set a pale pink outside, but no matter how quiet she always tries to be, Ash can usually hear Yuvie when she cries.

Sometimes, he listens, if only because it's the best he can do for her, because she would put on a brave face if he knocked and pretend that she was alright. He sits outside her door instead, because it's the closest he can get to her vulnerability, and because he wants to help her bear it.

But sometimes...sometimes, like tonight, he just can't. Their house is small enough that the only place he can safely retreat from her soft sobs is the attic, so that's where he goes, even if there's nothing to do in his small room except sleep.

Something clips his window, startling him out of his thoughts. Ash twists to push it open, unsurprised to find Micah waiting below. His neighbor is the only one who ever summons him like this.

“What are you doing?” Micah calls up to him.

“Nothing.” There's no point in lying.

Micah grins at that, but there's a shadow on his face. There always is these days. “Want to keep me company? I need a drink.”

“I'll be right down.”

Ash combs his fingers through his hair and then descends the stairs to their small sitting room. It's dark, and there's no light coming from under Yuvie's door, but Ash still goes to it and knocks lightly. He made the mistake of leaving without telling Yuvie once, and he'll never scare her that way again.

“Yuvie? I'm going to walk down to the Old Lion with Micah. I'll be back before curfew.”

A moment later, Yuvie opens her door, the slight tinge of red around her eyes the only sign she's been crying. “Be careful,” she says, leaning her shoulder in the doorway. “Stay out of trouble.”

It's a bit of a joke between them that she always sends him off this way, because both of them always try to make calculated trouble for Virien Sorentheon and the rest of the boy king's regime. “I will,” he replies anyway, as he always does, before he turns to go.

He finds Micah leaning beside the front door, and they fall into step with one another as they walk down the road to the Old Lion Tavern. “It's good to see you,” Ash says to Micah as they walk. Micah is one of his oldest friends in the city, and maybe his only true friend, but Ash hasn't seen much of him the last few weeks, since...

“I know I haven't been around much. The new labor assignment's been keeping me busy.”

That's not it, Ash knows, but he doesn't press the matter. At least Micah doesn't have the glint of grief in his eye that's become all too familiar lately. That's an improvement.

They step inside the Old Lion and seat themselves at a table in the corner, and Ash pretends not to know the owner, Morgyn Valindra, even though she's a member of the Brigade and they see each other often. Morgyn's daughter takes their order, and Ash doesn't bother trying to remember what her name is – the less the Brigade knows about each other, the better.

It's not until the girl returns with the tankards and Micah pays for Ash's too that Ash decides something isn't quite right. Raising an eyebrow at Micah's coin purse, he says, “They really pay you that well for builders' work?”

Micah laughs dryly. “No.”

Ash retrieves a bronze piece from his pocket and tries to push it across the table to his friend, but Micah ignores it, taking another long swallow of his ale instead. Ash watches him a moment, and then he decides he can't bite his tongue. “Are you alright?”

For a long while, Micah doesn't say anything. Ash's tankard of ale sits forgotten while he watches his friend, and he's about to ask again when Micah finally says, “I can't do this anymore.”

Ash stiffens. “Do what?”

“This. All of it. I can't be apart from him anymore.”

Suddenly, Ash isn't in the mood to drink, so he nudges his tankard aside and leans into the table so he's closer to Micah. He's been waiting for them to do this, but he can't say he's ready for it tonight, even if Micah is forcing his hand. “Micah,” he says, his voice low and even. “Jace wouldn't want you to do something stupid. Tell me what you're planning, and we'll figure out another way.”

For a long moment, Micah doesn't speak, and Ash is opening his mouth to press him before he finally says, “They never executed him. I talked to your contact, the one from the prisons – Aymon, or whatever his name is – and the rumors are true. Sometimes, when the mines are low on bodies, they don't execute their prisoners. They ship them out to the mountains and work them to death instead. I think...I think Jace is out there. We always say there's no way out of the city, but that's not right.”

Ash runs a hand over his face. “You're going to get yourself arrested.”

“Assaulting a city guard should do it.”

“And what if you're wrong? What if Jace is dead and they just didn't do it publicly? What if...what if they had too many insurgents to execute at the time, and so they could go a few weeks without reminding us that they kill men for fucking other men around here?”

“They always show us the executions for sodomy. You know that. Their Creator hates us, and they have to appease him.”

Ash tries a different tact. “Even if Jace is in the mines, what's to say you end up there too? You're no good to him swinging at the end of a noose.”

“Aymon says most of the prisoners are being shipped to the mines right now, so long as they didn't kill anyone and they aren't involved in an uprising against the throne. The odds are in my favor.”

Ash's vision swims, his stomach churning. “Don't do this. We can go to the safe house tonight, and we can talk about this until you see reason.” Ash almost says, _Don't leave me,_ but he bites his tongue, because he knows how stupid that would sound. He and Micah have been friends since Ash was ten years old, but telling Micah that he needs him isn't going to change anything. Ash knows Jace is more important to Micah than he is – he doesn't need to know he's right. “It's not worth your death,” he says instead.

Micah gives Ash a contemplative look, resigned and peaceful, and Ash knows he's said the wrong thing. “I feel sorry for you, you know.” he says in a measured voice. “You're too afraid to build your life around anything. You talk like you're so much more clever than all the rest of us, but you can't see how pitiful you are. Some things are worth dying for.”

 _Oh, so we're playing nasty,_ Ash thinks. He would blame the cheap, bitter ale, but Micah's tankard is still half full. There's no excuse for it – Micah is planning to get himself arrested, and this is what he wants to say to Ash on their last night together.

And fuck him for that, Ash thinks, his blood running hot. He's had to build his life around his and Yuvie's survival, because the two are inextricably linked. Everything Micah is talking about is a gods-damned luxury that he's never been able to afford.

Ash knows Micah thinks the two of them are similar, and maybe that's fair. Their lives have certainly been tied together, ever since that rainy afternoon when Ash was ten years old, when Micah threw a stone at his attic window and invited him outside to play. Ever since Ash kissed him that day in the alley, because it was one of the few good days he'd had since being trapped in New Euria and he liked Micah and he hadn't seen the harm, ever since Micah's mother saw them and came outside yelling about Ash being a cocksucker and a wicked influence and whatever else she had said – it all blurs together now.

And true, Micah has struggled in ways Ash doesn't understand, and that's why he thinks he has a right to lecture Ash. Micah's mother is...well, she's awful. Micah says she has her redeeming qualities, but Ash doesn't know what they might be. That day in the alley, as Micah's mother shouted herself hoarse, Yuvie had heard the commotion and come outside to throw herself between the woman and Ash. Yuvie had given up a month's worth of food rations to stop Micah's mother from reporting Ash, and when she had come back inside, as Ash sat at the table feeling ashamed and frightened and _wrong,_ she had told him that men like him had always been able to get married in Dwarlendev, and that this city was twisted and fucked. She had talked to him until he felt better, even if he was still confused and afraid.

At least Ash has Yuvie; Micah doesn't have anyone like her.

Micah has Jace, though. Hopefully. As long as he's still alive. And Ash knows that makes him feel superior, that he's brave enough to be with someone like that when Ash isn't.

If Micah feels sorry for him, Ash understands why. Still, it feels unfair. Micah knows far more about Ash than he should – he knows his true name, knows that Ash is half-wizard...he knows about the wizard prophecy, the one about a son of mixed birth delivering the wizards from the ice regions, and he even knows that Ash will never know his father because his mother was raped by a wizard trying to bring that prophecy into being. Micah knows that Virien Sorentheon and his priests would put Ash to death for sodomy, and they'd put him to death for his blood...he knows that Ash is made wrong in more ways than one, at least as far as the boy king is concerned.

Ash supposes he thought Micah knew better. Micah, more than anyone else save for Yuvie, should know why Ash is afraid to 'build his life around something'.

The words shouldn't sting so much, but as Ash turns them over in his mind, they do. They fucking _burn._

Ash pulls his tankard back to him, dimly aware that Micah is watching him, waiting for a reaction. He takes a deep swig of his ale, and then he says, in a low voice, “You righteous prick. I already have someone I have to look out for, and you know it.”

Micah tilts his head. He at least has the decency to look apologetic. “I shouldn't have said that. I didn't mean it.”

Ash nods, looking down at his drink. “It's fine,” he says. They both know Micah meant it. He’s been acting like this, so gods-damned superior, ever since he and Jace started sharing a bed at the safe house. It’s fine, it’s _fine_ , but Ash is tired of hearing about it all the same. He was happy for Micah when all of this started, but relationships between men like them in New Euria always end the same way – with one or both of them swinging in the city square to please the Eurian god.

“Ash,” Micah presses him, waiting until Ash looks up to continue. “I didn't mean it _like that._ I just...I want something more for you than this. I don't want you to be so afraid.”

Ash swallows thickly. He doesn't want to talk about this, about any of it. He doesn't even know how they ended up talking about him when Micah is the fool planning to orchestrate his own arrest, but all the same, he settles for saying, “I'm not afraid to die.”

“I know you're not.” Micah gives him a bemused look. “We all know you're not afraid to die. You're just afraid of wanting anything for yourself.”

“ _Qarou no’n_ don’t get to want anything here, Micah.”

Micah scowls at him. “Don’t call us that.”

It’s an ugly slur, Ash knows. He had needed Yuvie to explain it to him when he was a boy, and she had been perfectly reluctant to tell him that it meant _man-eaters_ in Ravian, that thousands of years ago, when the Eurian conquerors arrived on their shores, they had heard the word used as an insult by the Ravian people and misunderstood its meaning.

“What did they think it meant?” Ash had asked, and Yuvie had hesitated before she answered.

“Men who sleep with other men.”

(It means something far uglier when the Eurians say it, they both know, but Yuvie hadn't known how to mention that.)

Ash looks up at Micah and says, “If we don’t reclaim the words they use to hurt us, they’ll always hurt us.”

“Don’t think you can do that if there’s a part of you that hates yourself,” Micah says under his breath, just loud enough for Ash to hear.

Ash isn’t going to respond to that, or indulge this line of conversation that keeps turning back on him any further. He’s tired of Micah’s superiority just because he found someone he likes, as if they aren’t all just trying to stay alive in this place however they can.

Micah is still scowling down at his ale, so Ash waits a moment, and then he changes the subject. “You know the Savior isn't real, right? Those are just stories people like us pass around the safe house to make ourselves feel better, but there's no god looking out for us. There certainly isn't a god waiting to resurrect us when this regime kills us. When we're dead, we're dead.” _If they decide to kill you, you'll just be gone..._

“I know," Micah says, but he's always been more optimistic than Ash. Ash wouldn't be surprised if he does have some kind of dim faith in the god invented by men like them.

“When exactly are you planning to get yourself arrested?”

“Tomorrow morning. Why wait, right?”

Knowing that, there are probably some things Ash should say. But he doesn't. He bites his tongue, and they finish their drinks in silence, and they quietly walk back to their homes together. They walk down the same alley between their homes where Ash kissed Micah years ago, and Ash glances around once to make sure they're alone before he wraps his arms around his friend.

“I love you,” Ash says, “even if you are this stupid. I hope you find what you're looking for.”

One corner of Micah's mouth lifts in a small smile. “I hope you do, too.”

Ash isn't looking for anything. He's not looking for a life, or for someone to share it with. He just wants to stay alive with Yuvie long enough for their insurgency to do some damage to the Sorentheon regime. Wanting anything else is too dangerous....but he nods all the same.

Micah lays a hand on Ash's face and kisses his cheek. “Goodbye, Ash. Maybe we'll see one another again someday.”

He means it to be hopeful, Ash knows, but all he hears is, _I'll meet you in the mines, or in death, when they inevitably catch you too._

The next morning, Micah is gone. His mother, Eudoria, comes to knock on their door, and she demands to know if Ash has seen him. She tells Ash again what a terrible influence on Micah he has been, and Ash tries to ignore the memories of that rainy day, how afraid of her he still is, when he tells her to stop brandishing her finger in his face.

Yuvie emerges from the kitchen then, twirling a knife around her long fingers. It’s dull, Ash knows…but Eudoria doesn’t. “If there's nothing else, Eudoria,” she says stiffly, “I'll thank you kindly to get the fuck out of my house.”

Micah's mother is more afraid of Yuvie than she has ever been of Ash. She still treats Ash like he’s the small boy she once petrified in her alley, whereas Yuvie is the woman who threw her back against the wall and pressed her elbow hard into her throat and made Eudoria just the smallest bit afraid that she might meet her Creator that day. Eudoria takes one look at Yuvie and shrinks away, although she casts a last glare at Ash before she goes.

The glare drops from Yuvie's face the moment the door is closed behind her. “Is Micah really gone?” she asks Ash as he falls back into their worn armchair.

“I think so. He's trying to reach someone he thinks is in the mines.”

“Shit. I'm sorry.”

“We're meeting with the Brigade tonight, right? I want to tell Aymon to keep an eye out for him coming through the prisons.”

“Yes. As long as the city guard doesn't start swarming around this district again.” Yuvie twirls her butter knife one more time and turns back to the kitchen. “Can you help me with the dishes?”

Ash knows she's trying to distract him, and he appreciates it. “Sure,” he tells her. “I'll be right in.”

He feels his magic coursing hot under his skin, responding to his fear and his rage, and he lowers his head to his hands. He whispers the names of the Elven generals to himself, like Yuvie taught him to do as a boy when he needed to calm himself, from the first to the very last.

His hands are shaking, and he fists them in his lap. He lists the generals again, and again, and again, until finally, they're still.


End file.
